Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Web Coupons for Radio?

With radio advertising revenue in steep decline, here's a suggestion that could be attractive to dormant advertisers. It's also a terriffic on air and on-line opportunity for radio stations to build web traffic for station and affiliated sites (and on-line sales too).

According to eMarketer and comScore, the coupon category and specifically coupon web sites experienced 32% growth between October and November of last year. Consumers are always looking for good deals and one can imagine with some many people feeling the pinch of the current economic conditions this is more true than ever.

Top 10 Website Categories Among US Internet Users, Ranked by Growth in Unique Visitors, October & November 2008 (thousands and % change)

Radio has a long history of helping advertisers move product off shelves--something retail advertisers very much need right now. Advertisers could use ad time to direct listeners to special coupon sites (stand alone and linked from the main station site) to get great deals on merchandise they need and want.